Recent content in About on Milan Cvitkovic
Context: I recently spent 2.5 weeks in China visiting universities, research institutes, clinical sites, companies of all sizes, and investors. Most meetings focused on biotech, neurotech, and AI. Conventional wisdom my trip corroborated US cities feel medieval compared to Chinese cities. I was expecting the cleaner, safer, greener cities with better trains, EVs, consumer electronics, etc. But I…
None of the following is medical advice or particularly scientific. It’s just what I, an expert cold-haver, have found to work. Sleep/forced rest Most important: the instant you feel that “Why am I tired? Am I getting sick?” feeling, get in bed. I’m convinced prophylactic forced naps have saved me from days of symptoms. Yes, whatever time of day it is. Yes, it’s…
In rough chronological order Humans seem to have reached Europe, Australia, India, and China all before they reached non-Mahgreb West Africa. And then they kept moving back and forth between all these places, especially from Eurasia to Africa. (This is all on shaky evidence.) Cleopatra lived closer in time to us than to the building of the Egyptian pyramids. And the pyramids were built when there…
For the rare person who is searching for it: here is a scanned copy of the out-of-print Exploring the Mind-Brain Relationship, by Dr. Robert Galbraith Heath . I’m grateful to have received the blessing of Dr. Heath’s estate to post it here. (The book also has no copyright.) And many thanks to Jacob Sabes for doing the hardest work to get the pdf together.
In the tradition of Cell Biology by the Numbers , Physiology by Numbers , and Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know , here’s a collection of numbers worth knowing if you’re working in neurotechnology. You can also download this list as Anki flashcards . Having them memorized and at your fingertips is great for sanity checking ideas. I plan to keep growing this list and Anki deck…
This is a list of things you’re allowed to do that you thought you weren’t, or didn’t even know you could. I haven’t tried everything on this list, mainly due to cost. But you’d be surprised how cheap most of the things on this list are (especially the free ones). Note that you can replace “hire” or “buy” with “barter for” or…
Cause Area: Differential Neurotechnology Development
Thanks to AJ Kourabi for research assistance. Deep Brain Stimulators ( source ) Building on extant stereotactic neurosurgical tools and cardiac pacemaker technology, prototype DBS systems were first implanted in humans in the late 1960s. DBS performed in numerous patients until 1976, when the FDA was established. FDA stopped DBS sales until clinical trial data is submitted. No company was willing…
Unfortunately, from a PR standpoint, neurotechnology doesn’t have a single, intuitive goal like climate tech, longevity research, or to a lesser extent artificial intelligence. Instead the state of neurotech is like the early days of personal computing (god help us). There are so many possible use cases that it’s hard to make a succinct argument for its importance. So in lieu of a succinct…
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Key Lessons: Dedicating IP to the public domain doesn’t necessarily yield more public benefit than patenting Clinical trials for depression are hard to run Treating depression with magnetic fields sounds, to most people first hearing about it, about as legitimate as treating depression with healing crystals. But in fact this technique, called Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), is…
Key Lessons: Similar technologies with different names can elicit wildly different cultural and regulatory reactions The number of papers published on a technology, or the age of its field of study, or their number of citations therein, tells you almost nothing about its value or effectiveness The US used to have a much stronger DIY-health/treat-yourself-at-home ethic The FDA cannot be predicted…
Key Lessons: Technological arbitrage. Giving people 10-year-old technology is valuable if they’re currently using 40-year-old technology. University lawyers often have unrealistic opinions about the IP their staff will generate. Scientists have an unreasonable affection for (their underlings’) suffering. They won’t buy tools to make their (underlings’) lives easier — they…
A collection of market failures 1 in science. 2 If I’m missing your favorite market failure, please let me know . Contents Information Asymmetries Knowledge monopolies Mathwashing Replication Crises Poor Credit Assignment Scooping and duplicate work Author lists and contributions Citation pile-ons Public Goods Organizational inflexibility Bureaucratic Bottlenecks Taxes Administrative Burden…
When should you enforce standards by requiring permission, and when should you enforce them by punishment? I’m glad aircraft have to be pre-approved by the FAA before I can fly in them, rather than letting Boeing release whatever planes they want and recalling any that end up not working. And on the other hand, we don’t expect the FDA to pre-approve every new culinary delight the food…
Concrete Problems in Human Safety
I spend a lot of time deflating people’s dreams that machine learning can help them with their problem. Everyone knows there’s been a revolution in machine learning (ML) over the past decade. But they tend to not know that the revolution has been spiky, not smooth. ML hasn’t improved a large amount at all tasks — rather it’s improved a flabbergasting amount at a few…
Unlike human beings, the debate over the question “should people live forever, if they want?” never seems to die. This is surprising given that the answer is obviously “yes." In fact the arguments for “no” are so unimpressive I’m relegating them to an Appendix . A better question is “should I work on human longevity, and if so, how?” 1 This is a personal…
Cognitive meditation concentrative focusing on a specific sensation or thought, like the breath metta gratitude practices open monitoring psychotherapy cognitive behavioral therapy neurofeedback hypnosis breathwork brain training Akili Interactive targeting ADHD action video games to reduce depression conditioning disulfiram social engagement friendships romance group activities (games, sports,…
If antinatalists are right that having children is wrong, does it matter once the antinatalists go extinct? If you build an “ethical” AI that keeps getting deleted by its “unethical” AI peers, have you accomplished your mission of building ethical AI? Is religious tolerance a fatal flaw in liberal democracy if religions with illiberal doctrines can always become a majority?…
TL;DR: AI is useful for a real-world task only if the cost for the AI to do the thing and for you to check its work is less than the existing solution. AI is quickly getting better at many things. This excites many people, and justly so. But an AI’s work doesn’t get shipped unless it’s checked, assuming you don’t want to go out of business. 1 So it’s important to remember in this age of AI…
quick bursts of quantifiable attention be he who he may also-ran naff swish and crazy jazz like that commonplacing tough (noun) unmaking accept no substitutes carom tontine sampapalapa you crazy for this one avant le lettre supercilious loamy iatrogenic loose-limbed watusi hung the moon bring ya mom’n’dem stygian gadabout beat cheeks candy striper l’esprit d’escalier…
You Can’t Build a New Machine Learning Product with Old DevOps
I’d like to build (maybe with you!) a user-friendly web platform for collaborating on mathematical proofs and organizing mathematical knowledge. Why bother? Progress in mathematics is upstream of nearly all progress in science and technology. But unfortunately, progress in math is getting harder to make. Humanity’s mathematical knowledge is getting larger, more complex, and more Balkanized 1 by…
Face-to-face interaction is by far the most valuable part of a conference, so: Don’t attend any talk that’s being recorded. You’ll get all the same info in 10% the time by skipping through the video later. Use the time to go meet people. Caveat: if attending the talk will let you meet the speaker (usually it won’t), and you’re dying to meet them, you should go. What if you have a question for the…
Written tractatus style: a sublist justifies the point immediately above it. Note: this argument might, deep down, actually be a reductio for folk notions of human value. Avoiding bad value drift is as important as solving value alignment . Bad value drift is possible. Value drift is possible. Human values are a function of the contents or structure of human minds, and human minds can be altered…